Works show another side of Africa
ATLANTA — A new exhibition encourages visitors to abandon their preconceived notions about Africa and explore the creative efforts of people using design to bring about change on the vast continent.
“Making Africa: A Continent of Contemporary Design,” at Atlanta’s High Museum of Art, delves into the continent’s diversity and vibrancy through more than 200 works by more than 120 artists from 22 countries.
Too often people associate Africa with problems like hunger or corruption, said Carol Thompson, the museum’s curator of African art. So the exhibition seeks to broaden that view by focusing on people who use design to provide solutions.
“I want people to see Africa in a new way and appreciate the creativity of artists on the continent, past and present,” she said.
The first work on display is by Kenyan artist Cyrus Kabiru. “C-Stunners” is a collection of wearable eyeglass sculptures crafted from everyday objects — wires, screws, shoe-polish tins. The pieces are meant to help “correct” the perception of Africa, Thompson said.
A collection of biting
comic-style images mocks stereotypes. One by South African artist Anton Kannemeyer shows a white man in a Superman outfit, with “SR” emblazoned on his chest, handing a sack of money to an African boy saying “Thanks, Super Rich Man!”
One of the most captivating pieces in the exhibition is a collaborative project by South African artist Mikhael Subotzky and British artist Patrick Waterhouse. It captures Ponte City, a 54-story circular apartment building in Johannesburg, South Africa. A posh address when it was built in 1975, it has become rundown since the end of apartheid.
The two artists photographed every television set, door and window view in the building between 2008 and 2010 and put the 600 photos together in three tall lightboxes in the same order as they were in the building. The result is a captivating glimpse into the tallest apartment building on the continent.
There’s also a set of handkerchiefs from fashion label Ikire Jones that recreates 18thcentury textiles but inserts African people into them. An embroidered silk cape, paired with a boldly patterned silk shirt and trousers from London-based Nigerian designer Duro Olowu, combines prints and colors in a characteristicly African way, Thompson said.
Dozens of videos and digital displays are also part of the exhibition, so many that they can’t be viewed in one visit.
The exhibition, organized by Vitra Design Museum in Germany and the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao in Spain, is also slated to be shown at the Albuquerque Museum in New Mexico, Feb. 3 through May 6, and at the Blanton Museum of Art in Austin, Texas, Oct. 14, 2018, through Jan. 13, 2019.